After the fall of Acre to the Mamluks in 1291 the Hospitallers had withdrawn to Cyprus where, however, they found that the estates they held were not extensive enough to support them. To make things even worse they were prohibited by the king — with whom they were not on the best of terms — from acquiring any more lands. As a result, statutes of 1301 and 1302 attempted (unsuccessfully, it would seem) to reduce the Convent’s numbers on the island to 80 brethren-at-arms, of whom 65 or 70 were to be knights and the rest sergeants. With such bleak prospects, therefore, an opportunity for the Order to take control of Rhodes and the islands of the Dodecanese in 1306 and thus establish its independence was quickly seized. Rhodes at that time was nominally part of the Byzantine Empire, though its governor had seceded and was effectively ruling the island as an independent state. Allied with a Genoese corsair, the first Hospitaller attack, under the Grand Master Foulques de Villaret, comprised a fleet of no more than 2 galleys and 4 other ships carrying 35 brother knights, 6 Turcopoles and 500 infantry, plus 2 Genoese galleys. The city of Rhodes itself finally fell in 1308 after a protracted siege, and the Hospitallers transferred their Convent from Cyprus about 2 years later, in 1309 or 1310. However, even after the conquest of Rhodes the Order continued in addition to be a major landholder in Cyprus, with preceptories or towers at Limassol, Nicosia, Famagusta and elsewhere, including a number of lesser fortified sites handed over after the dissolution of the Order of the Temple (e. g. the fort of Gastria), and in 1310 the Preceptor of Cyprus was still able to raise a force of 80 brethren (admittedly including 40 who had returned from Rhodes), plus 20 Turcopoles and 200 infantry, to support King Henry II.
Before long Kos, Nisyros and the rest of the Dodecanese archipelago was also in the Order’s hands, plus the tiny island of Castellorizzo (until 1450) and some forts on the Turkish mainland, principally the Castle of St Peter at Halikarnassos, or Bodrum, constructed only at the beginning of the 15th century; one source of c. 1357 described de Villaret as holding ‘many castles in Turkey’, captured from both the Byzantines and the Turks, but Anthony Luttrell emphasises that these mainland conquests were ‘briefly held and unidentifiable’. One exception was Smyrna, captured by a Veneto-Cypriot-Papal league in 1344, in the subsequent defence of which the Hospitallers played a key role. In 1345 a Hospitaller officer (Fra Jean de Biandrate, prior of Lombardy) was appointed the city’s capitaneus armatae generalis, and in 1359 Fra Nicholas Benedetti was appointed ‘Captain of Smyrna’ for 8 years, with orders to fortify the town and maintain 150 Frankish mercenaries and 2 galleys for its defence. The Order became wholly, if reluctantly, responsible for Smyrna’s defence in 1374, holding it until its capture and destruction by Tamerlane at the end of 1402. One ftirther area of Hospitaller involvement on the mainland was in Cilicia, where the Order had held land since the Crusades. In the early-14th century the situation there was somewhat confused, their possessions having been confiscated by the Cilician crown during a civil war, so that the Preceptor, Fra Maurice de Pagnac, had to maintain plures equites et armigeri there entirely at his own expense in the 1320s. The situation may have improved somewhat thereafter, for a source of c. 1323 claims that the Order could afford to maintain 150 armed horsemen from its Cypriot and Armenian incomes. However, de Pagnac’s death in 1328 effectively marked the end of the Preceptory, though it continued to exist on paper, a Preceptor being recorded again in 1340 and a Prior as late as 1347. The kingdom itself was liquidated by the Mamluks in 1375.
In addition Hospitaller contingents appeared in virtually every major Aegean naval campaign throughout this period, and accompanied numerous expeditions against the Anatolian, Syrian and Egyptian coastlines in alliance with Cypriots, Venetians or Genoese. They provided 4 galleys for King Peter I’s capture of Adalia in 1361, for instance, and participated too in his attacks on Alexandria in 1365 (for which they provided 4 galleys, or horse-transports, perhaps 12 transports, 100 brethren plus mercenaries), and on Tripoli in 1367, in which the Order’s Turcopolier was killed. At least 50 brethren fought alongside the Byzantines in the sack of the Ottoman fortress at Lampsacus in the Dardanelles in 1359, and Hospitaller ships under the Preceptor of Kos were involved along with the Achaeans, Venetians and Byzantines of the Morea in the naval victory over a Turkish fleet at Megara, also in about 1359 (others say 1364). Two Hospitaller galleys were even included in the Byzantine fleet with which Manuel II rescued his father from Emperor John VII in 1390. There were Hospitallers at the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396, under Grand Master Philibert de Naillac, forming part of the main body under King Sigismund — indeed, the ‘English’ referred to in some sources as being present at the battle were probably also Hospitallers, under the English Grand Prior, John Radyington. An Italian chronicle mentions that there were Hospitallers too at the defence of Mytilene on Lesbos in 1462, recording 70 brethren amongst its 500 defenders.
One area of more permanent involvement was Greece, where for a brief period (1377-81) the Order actually governed the principality of Achaea, becoming deeply involved in the complex political situation that then prevailed. In 1378, for instance, the Order’s forces under the Grand Master Fernandez de Heredia were defeated by the allied army of Ghin Boua Spata, Albanian prince of Arta, and Thomas Preljubovic, Serbian despot of loannina, de Heredia himself being captured. In the same year his lieutenant in Achaea, Fra Gaucher de La Bastide, Prior of Toulouse, even enlisted two elements of the so-called Navarrese Company for a period of 8 months, these comprising John de Urtubia’s unit of 100 men-at-arms and Mahiot de Coquerel’s of 50, paid 11,000 and 5,500 ducats respectively. There is even the possibility that the Order condoned, and that some Hospitallers perhaps even supported, the subsequent Navarrese invasion of Catalan Athens. However, the Order nevertheless abandoned Achaea in 1381, finding the financial commitment of its defence to be too great. A second period of Greek involvement commenced in 1397 (Runciman says 1400) when Theodore I, despot of the Morea, invited the Hospitallers to occupy and defend the isthmus of Corinth against the Ottomans after a similar invitation to the Venetians had been declined. A garrison was duly installed under a Captain, Fra Eli de Fossat, and was maintained until 1404, despite open conflict with the Athenians and Byzantines from early in 1403. The Order had in the meantime purchased considerable tracts of the despotate, including even Mistra and Kalavryta, but was obliged to sell them back when it withdrew from Corinth in 1404. Finally, in 1423 the Hospitallers approached the Venetians with a view to exchanging Rhodes for territory of equal value in Greece, preferably Negroponte where the Order had first — if only briefly — established a foothold at Carystus in 1351.
The internal organisation of the Order was into langues, unequal-sized divisions10 of brethren speaking the same language, this arrangement being approved by Pope John XXII at a chapter-general summoned at Montpelier in 1331. At first there were 7 langues; each had its own Grand Prior in its mother country, plus a commander in Rhodes called a pilier, who was a conventual bailiff of the Order and held one of its senior posts. In order of importance the langues and the respective posts their piliers held were: Provence, with the post of Grand Preceptor or Grand Commander, the Master’s lieutenant; Auvergne, the post of Marshal, the senior military officer of the Order; France, the post of Hospitaller; Italy, the post of Admiral, with as his deputy the Captain of the Galleys; Spain, the post of Drapier; England (including Ireland), the post of Turcopolier, an officer now responsible for coastal defence; and lastly Germany (including Scandinavia, Bohemia and Poland), the post of Grand Bailiff. In 1462 an eighth langue was added by the division of the fifth into Castile (including Portugal) and Spain (comprising Aragon, Catalonia and Navarre), of which the latter retained the post of Drapier while the pilier of Castile held the post of Chancellor. The 7 or 8 piliers formed part of the Grand Master’s council, and the brethren actually resident on Rhodes or one of its dependent islands constituted the Order’s Convent.
Of the Order’s various types of brethren, the knights — the so-called ‘knights of justice’ — were the most important. To gain admittance to the Order at all, these had first to prove noble birth on both sides for several generations, the precise regulations varying from langue to langue; the Germans were strictest, requiring 16 quarterings of the postulant’s coat-of-arms, while the French langues required 8 and the rest only 4. They then spent a year as novices before joining the Convent at Rhodes for 3 years’ military service, which by the end of the 15th century generally took the form of service as an officer aboard the Order’s galleys, each year of which was termed a carovane, or caravan. After this the knight spent at least a further 2 years in the Convent, after which he was eligible for promotion, though to qualify for the position of bailifft a knight first had to spend 15 years at Rhodes. This practice led to some caustic criticism of the Order, such as that voiced by the French crusade theorist Philippe de Mezieres, who wrote in 1389 that brethren only went to Rhodes for the few years necessary (he says 4 or 5) to secure themselves promotion to a rich European priory or preceptory. The Order’s other categories of brethren comprised: conventual chaplains, who were non-military ecclesiastics eligible for promotion to the posts of Prior, or even Bishop of the Order; serving brethren, originally sergeants but by this period men-at-arms like the knights, from whom they differed principally in being expected to be of ‘respectable’ rather than noble birth; ‘chaplains of obedience’, the ecclesiastical counterpart of the serving brethren and similarly non-noble; and lastly ‘magistral knights’ and ‘knights of grace’ (i. e., donats), who were honorary brethren nominated by the Grand
Master — in 1382 we read of 56 brethren and donats being ordered to return to Europe because of Rhodes’ inability to support them. In addition the Order employed considerable numbers of mercenaries (stipendarii), particularly aboard their galleys and in their garrisons on Kos, at Smyrna and, in the 15th century, in the fortress of St Peter at Halikarnassos; bound by an oath of allegiance, they were maintained by the payments made in lieu of military service by Italian settlers in Rhodes. During the 4-month siege of the island by the Mamluks in 1444 the Order apparently paid out as much as 68,000 ducats to its mercenaries, hired to fight on both land and sea. One authority reckons there were as many as 3-4,000 Italian and French mercenaries on Rhodes in 1480.
From 1313 onwards colonists, largely Italians, were attracted from Europe by the lure of grants of captured land on Rhodes, the smaller islands, and even the Turkish mainland. Valued at 65 librae (650 Rhodian bezants) for a married knight with a family, and 50 librae for a bachelor, the grants were given out in exchange for the military service of the knight {uno homine latino) and 2 men, one of them armed, plus a warhorse and a rounsey or mule. Non-knightly men-at-arms received fiefs valued at 40 librae if married, or 30 librae if single, in exchange for their mounted military service accompanied by a single foot-soldier armed with either a lance or a crossbow. Commoners received fiefs 15 or 13 librae in value in exchange for military service on foot. All recipients of these assorted sizes of grant were required to perform their service whenever and wherever called upon, but apparently only in defence of the island. They served at their own expense for expeditions of a single day’s duration, but were paid according to their rank for longer periods. Settlers who owned galleys of 112-120 oars and were prepared to put them at the disposal of the Order when required received lands and property worth 100 librae (or less for smaller vessels), plus the guarantee that if the ship was lost in Hospitaller service the Order would replace it. The crews, on the other hand, were provided by seamen who received non-feudal stipendia: a galley captain (comitus galea) was paid 20 bezants a month, or 30 when at sea, while other officers and navigators {naucherii) were paid 10 or 15 bezants and sailors and oarsmen received only victuals and ‘ordinary pay’. However, since these salaries were lower than those offered, for example, by the Venetians, they proved unattractive to potential colonists, as is proved by the Order’s reliance both on hired Genoese galleys and on the servitude marina for the manning of its own.
Also known as servitudo marinariorum and servitut de la marine, servitudo marina was an obligation by which those members of the native, basically Greek, population called subditi marinarii provided hereditary naval service by reason of their social standing. It was probably evolved by the Hospitallers from the vestiges of the old Byzantine theme system (Rhodes having once been part of the Kibyrrhaiots maritime thema), which though commuted to cash payments hs early as the 11th century probably nevertheless continued to survive under the Byzantine administration that had existed up until the Hospitaller conquest. Established by the Order by 1347 at the latest and probably much earlier, possibly c. 1314, this servitudo guaranteed the Order a ready supply of reliable seamen who, unlike mercenaries, only had to be paid when actually serving, the Admiral being responsible for recruiting and paying them. The marinarii of each district were grouped into squadre, each squadra constituting the crew of a galley and serving in turn on a rota basis. Men unable to serve were obliged to provide a substitute. For an assortment of reasons the number of marinarii declined during the 14th century, so that in 1428 the age from which such service was required was lowered to 12, while in 1433 a general amnesty was declared for all marinarii who had fled Rhodes and the other islands in order to escape the obligation, in the hope that they might return. In 1446 it even proved necessary to transfer the duty of manning the ‘galley of the guard’ (galia dela guardia, for which see below), previously a responsibility of the marinarii, to a Genoese merchant company. Eventually the increasing inadequacies of the servitudo resulted in its abolition at the end of 1462, when it was replaced instead by a grain-tax to finance the employment of mercenaries. In addition there are some indications that press-gang methods of recruitment may also have been resorted to after 1462.
The Order had begun building up its naval strength almost as soon as it had been evicted from Acre. The office of Admiral had appeared by 1299, and from 1300 he was empowered to raise crews at the Treasury’s expense when required. Their naval strength remained of modest proportions, and throughout the 14th century the Hospitallers rarely mustered more than 4 or 6 galleys, excluding the one or 2 that were permanently maintained to guard Rhodes (the Cretan Emmanuele Piloti, for instance, mentions ‘the galley of Rhodes’ in 1403 and the ‘galleys of the guard’ in 1408). In 1320 the Order won a naval victory over the Turks off Rhodes with a fleet of 4 galleys and 12 other vessels, and in 1333 the Hospitallers were expected to provide 4 galleys to a combined Veneto-Byzantine fleet, this number being increased to 10 by the time they set out in 1334, not all of which were provided. Another projected expedition for 1335 was to have included 6 galleys and 8 transports but was abandoned, but the Order did provide 6 galleys to the Veneto-Cypriot-Papal fleet that captured Smyrna in 1344. They promised 3 galleys to another abandoned coalition of 1350, and supplied 4 to Peter I’s expeditions of 1361 and 1365. Even as late as 1440, the fleet that sailed
Out to confront the Mamluks included only 7 galleys (which had been hired from the Genoese), plus 4 large merchantmen and 6 other vessels, while in 1470 and 1472 the Order contributed just 2 galleys to Venetian and Veneto-Neapolitan fleets respectively.
Most Hospitaller ships were built in Genoa or Marseilles, but occasionally some were constructed, and others usually repaired, in the Order’s own arsenal at Rhodes. The galleys usually carried one or 2 small guns in the bows, a practice probably copied from the Venetians in the late-14th century. We read of Hospitaller ships using their guns against the Mamluk fleet in 1440, and Doukas tells us that in 1455 an Ottoman fleet approaching Rhodes found the harbour ‘filled with large ships all standing in battle formation’ and ‘saw that there was twice as much artillery’ on them as there had been aboard the well-armed Genoese ships it had encountered at Chios. The Order also made full and efficient use of artillery on land, though there is some evidence that they considered its use unchivalrous. Sources for the Ottoman siege of the island in 1480 record the successes of the Hospitaller artillery on that occasion, and in one of Caoursin’s manuscript illustrations of the Turkish attack a battery of some 6 light pieces mounted on the walls features prominently. The Order’s artillerists were non-brethren, being technicians employed by contract (as was Johann Berger, their master-gunner in 1480). Of 2 surviving Hospitaller guns in Nuremberg and Paris dating to Pierre d’Aubusson’s period as Grand Master, one is a culverine that could fire 55 lb shot, while the other is a bombard measuring 6 feet 3 inches in length and capable of firing stone shot weighing 574 lbs.
The total strength of the Hospitaller Convent of Rhodes, where the Order had built or restored some 30 fortresses by 1480, is recorded in many contemporary sources throughout this era. There were 200 knights by 1330 and reputedly 400 on Rhodes, plus mercenaries, local levies, and a small garrison on Kos, by 1345. Rudolf von Suchem in 1350 put the Convent at 350 knights, while an anonymous traveller of 1441 reckoned there were 500, a figure repeated by Arnold von Harff in 1497. However, the Order’s official strength on Rhodes in 1466 was only 300 knights, 20 (200?) serving brethren and 30 chaplains, increased to 450 and then 550 only in the early years of the 16th century. The discrepancy, however, is fairly certainly explained by the failure of some of these figures to include the garrisons of the Dodecanese islands and the mainland fortresses, which were sizeable. The Preceptor of Kos, for instance, had to maintain 25 brethren, 10 mercenary men-at-arms and 100 Turcopoles by 1394-95 (plus a doctor, an apothecary and a galley), while in 1403 Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo described the island as being ‘always garrisoned by 100 knights of the Order of St John, under a lieutenant, and they hold the castle and the town in force.’ The fortress of St Peter at Halikarnassos had a garrison that included 50 brethren in 1460, while Smyrna at its fall to Tamerlane in 1402 had a garrison of 200 knights plus mercenaries. In addition to the Convent, the Order could draw on its European possessions for reinforcements. 100 brethren were summoned to Rhodes in 1358, for example, while in 1375 the pope authorised 500 brethren, each with an esquire, to be called up for operations in Greece, though the list given adds up to only 390, comprised of 125 brethren from the French priories, 101 Italian, 73 Spanish and Portuguese, 38 English and Irish, 32 German and Bohemian, 17 Hungarian, and 2 each from the preceptories of Achaea and the duchy of Athens.
When Rhodes finally fell to the Ottomans in 1522 its garrison was made up of 290 brother knights, 15 donati, about 300 serving brethren, 500 Genoese and 50 Venetian seamen, 400 Cretan crossbowmen, and several thousand Rhodian militiamen.
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